Every September, as the start of a new school year in Ontario, I think about my goals for the year. As a beginning secondary school teacher, I would focus on starting the school year with setting expectations with students, keeping up with lesson plans, and helping my students feel welcomed and supported. As I transitioned from secondary school teacher to mathematics consultant to elementary school teacher, I learned the importance of setting goals and reflecting on my ability to keep those goals.

Many Septembers have come and gone over these years as a teacher and now as a university professor. The goals have changed and some were met with great success while other goals had to be repeated year after year. As a department chair in my university, I have set three goals: building community, sharing knowledge, and mentoring and coaching. I apply these same goals to my role as the Editor-in-Chief of CJSMTE. The first goal, building community, refers to the many readers of the journal. We are proud to have editorial board members from 15 countries, representing science, mathematics, and technology education. These editorial board members meet once per year to discuss the journal as well as provide advice on future directions. There is also a growing community of readers who share their experiences with others to that we can receive manuscripts from scholars in different countries and who are researching new and exciting areas associated with the mission of the journal.

The second goal, sharing knowledge, is one of the founding principles of the journal. The articles, viewpoints, book reviews, and commentaries give authors an opportunity to share their knowledge with the community. We receive many manuscripts that illustrate the interest of scholars to share their knowledge with you and I invite you to read the current issue with an open mind to see what new knowledge you can gain and how you might use it in your professional and academic life.

The third goal, mentoring and coaching, is foundational to building community and sharing knowledge. A strong and growing community needs members to reach out to others to mentor them to assist them to become more involved in the community. As doctoral supervisors, we mentor our students in the ways of the academy and how to undertake research and, hopefully, how to publish that research. I hope that assisting new scholars with publishing is a goal for faculty members as it should also be a goal of this journal. We will be providing funds for new scholars to assist them in their writing to publish a manuscript. We will be looking for manuscripts from new scholars that would benefit from this funding.

The second part of the third goal, coaching, is one that all of us with some experience can do for our colleagues. We can encourage the submission of manuscripts, we can provide feedback and edits to manuscripts prior to them being submitted, and most importantly, we can accept the offer from the journal to review manuscripts that have been submitted to provide much needed feedback to these authors.

I am sure that you have had some experience with these three goals. Perhaps you would consider submitting a commentary as a reply to this editorial or a viewpoint on how to build and sustain a community in science, mathematics, and technology education. These insights will serve to mentor new (and experienced) scholars and professionals. As a final challenge, what are your goals in your professional and academic life? How will you make this year different from last year? I look forward to hearing the answers to these questions.